In the film Meet the Parents, much is made (by the parents) of the fact that Greg, played by Ben Stiller, is a male nurse. He faces the usual jokes and innuendo. But what is most striking is that the term "male nurse" is still in use at all. True, there are very few men in nursing. But I can't recall someone being described as a female doctor, lawyer, engineer - or even "female soldier". It's a sign of how men in caring professions continue to be viewed as slightly weird. They are lucky if people simply assume they are gay; if unlucky, that they have darker motives for choosing a caring role.

Men who choose a career caring for children are the ones who face the highest obstacles. At a nursery attended by my oldest son, the good news was that there was a male member of staff. The bad news was that many parents were put off by this. Many insisted that their children's nappies were not changed by him. Think that through just for a moment, and imagine how it made him feel. He has moved on to other things now.

Just one in a hundred nursery nurses are male. Early schooling is also - increasingly - a female- dominated zone: just 3% of nursery teachers and 17% of primary school teachers are men, with the lower years even more skewed along gender lines.

The only two men on an infant school course at a central London college say they have been openly accused of being gay ("even by my mum's friends," says one), "perverts" and/or not up to a "proper" job.

Does it matter? Isn't childcare women's work anyway? Yes and no. The gender gap in care matters hugely. It blocks men from a growing part of the labour market. And it almost certainly holds wages down in the caring professions. But the real price will be paid in years to come, because the apartheid of the childcare professions is based on outdated, self-fulfilling assumptions about gender roles. It risks condemning another generation to a life of gender inequality. We lament the fact that men do not do their fair share of unpaid work, then put our sons into institutions which, being female-staffed, ram home the message that caring is women's work.

Why is an 18-year-old woman with no children seen, intrinsically, as a better carer than a man who has raised three? We have progressively and successfully abolished the myths that barred women from certain professions, including the military. Women are now on warships and in the cockpits of fighter planes. It is time to drop the similarly short-sighted prejudices about men's ability to care, to cuddle, to teach, to play. We've had GI Jane; it's time for Barbie Bill.

What, then, is to be done? The national childcare commission, which produced its excellent report recently, records gender disparities but has little to offer in terms of remedies. A few symbolic gestures from the government would help (how about a Male Carer of the Year award?). The training bodies for caring professions need to adopt a more proactive approach to attracting men - or at the very least, to not repelling them. And individual institutions need to put in place strict non-discrimination policies.

But it may be that, given the size of the mountain, more drastic action is required. We know that men are put off by the low salaries and that many are unable to take the time to undergo training courses, because they are more likely to be the primary breadwinner in their household. Perhaps we should offer men who want to train as childcarers an additional financial incentive. We offer science and maths teacher trainees £1,000 bursaries. Why not male childcare trainees? Of course, it should not be necessary. But in the real world, right now, it might be the key to kick-starting the process of getting more men in the nursery, in the same way that women-only shortlists kick-started the process of getting more women into parliament.

Above all, though, a broader shift in attitudes is required if men are to feel comfortable choosing a caring job. One of the infant school trainees, after recounting endless tales of stereotyping and innuendo, said: "It is incredibly upsetting. You just try not to think about it and get on with the job. Because I think it is the most important job in the world."